Tag Archives: Shariah

“To Be or Not To Be: What ‘Muslim’ Actually Means

The entire debate about what it means to be “Muslim” and shariah-compliant might be solved with a quick lesson in Arabic grammar.

This is because the word “Muslim” contains in its Arabic meaning its own definition.

You see, the word “Muslim” in Arabic has two parts: the “Mu” prefix and the triliteral root that forms the word “Islam.” That root word, “Islam,” is a verbal noun that means “submission.” When an “Mu” prefix is attached to such a root in Arabic, the resulting noun means “a person who does the thing that root word denotes.”

Therefore, with “Islam” being a verbal noun meaning submission, “Muslim” therefore means “one who submits.” Submits to what? To Allah’s will, which is shariah. Islamic Law. Thus, anyone who presents as a Muslim is by definition shariah-adherent, because that’s what the word itself actually means. If someone claims to be a Muslim, or converts to Islam, or was born into Islam but does not apostatize or separate from it, then it is reasonable to conclude that such a person is shariah-compliant—at a minimum, tacitly—unless and until told otherwise. And the converse must also be true: one who does not submit to shariah, one who does not adhere to shariah, does not meet the linguistic definition of “Muslim.”

As for “shariah,” which is defined and understood by the Islamic scholars to be an all-encompassing, legal-military doctrinal system that features some religious beliefs, it is binding for Muslims, even as the word “Muslim” dictates. Although shariah includes a multitude of obligations, among which many are innocuous (to believe in the oneness of Allah; to pray five times per day; to avoid eating pork, etc.), jihad as warfare to spread Islam is also a core, compelling obligation. All who are Muslim by birth or conversion are obligated to actively support the establishment of a universal governmental system (Caliphate/Imamate) based on shariah and the replacement by means of jihad of any political system not governed by shariah.

It is this commandment to Islamic supremacism that is most problematic for non-Muslims and responsible for much of the debate about what exactly “being Muslim” means. But if we realize that the answer lies in the etymology of the Arabic word “Muslim” itself, then it will be understood that unless and until that identity as “one who submits” is abjured by the individual in question, the person is accorded full credit for living a shariah-adherent life.

Will the ‘Red-Green Axis’ Snuff Free Speech?

Ten years ago last week, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which is arguably the world’s most powerful multinational organization, declared war on freedom of speech. On December 8, 2005, the OIC unveiled a 10-year “Program of Action” for imposing worldwide what Islamic supremacists call shariah blasphemy restrictions on expression that might “offend” Muslims.

Shortly after President Obama’s inauguration, his administration co-sponsored a resolution in the UN Human Rights Council that basically endorsed the OIC’s goal. In due course, what came to be known as UNHRC Resolution 16/18 was adopted with U.S. support.

In July 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in Istanbul, Turkey that the United States government would work to curb Muslim-offending expression through “old-fashion techniques of shaming and peer pressure.” In the aftermath of the murderous jihadist attacks in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012, Mrs. Clinton promised to prosecute a man she knowingly falsely blamed for precipitating those attacks by offending Muslims with a provocative internet video. A few days later, Mr. Obama appeared at the United Nations, declaring, “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”

Then, in the immediate aftermath of the latest jihadist attack on U.S. soil in San Bernardino, California, Attorney General Loretta Lynch used the occasion of an address to Muslim Advocates – a group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – to announce that the Justice Department would take action against “anti-Muslim rhetoric” and “violent talk.”

Even before that pronouncement, many Americans were feeling that they could not conform to official calls to “say something” when they saw something that may indicate a terrorist attack in the making. That was certainly true of the San Bernardino shooters’ neighbors. How many more will feel that way when faced with the possibility of not just “peer pressure,” but prosecution?

Within days, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson co-sponsored and headlined an event with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a controversial group that – despite its origins as a defender of civil liberties – has become a great enabler and enforcer of the Islamists’ campaign to suppress free speech. (Interestingly, the SPLC’s record of baseless attacks against those who disagree with their hard left agenda has prompted the FBI tostop working with the SPLC.)

These are facts. One can draw whatever conclusion one wants with regard to connections and causality. But these facts cannot safely be ignored.

The cumulative effect of such accommodations in the face of Islamic supremacist demands has been predictable: It has greatly emboldened those who believe they are divinely mandated to impose shariah worldwide. That is especially true of the steps taken by the Obama administration to prevent U.S. military, intelligence, homeland security, and law enforcement personnel from being trained about, or working on, shariah and the jihadist behavior – whether violent or stealthy, individual or collective – that it impels.

The American people have understandably become increasingly concerned about evidence that actual and potential jihadists are on the move, both literally and figuratively. They are expressing not just incredulity, but outrage at mounting evidence that the U.S government is failing to do all that it can to protect them against such obvious threats. And they are increasingly attentive to national security-minded individuals who are clear-eyed and fact-based with respect to the violent and stealthy forms of jihad. They are also demonstrating support for Republican politicians who have arrived at similar conclusions about the enemies we face.

Perhaps out of desperation, an unlikely coalition of leftists, both in and out of government, and Islamists – which some have dubbed the “Red-Green Axis” – has mounted of late an increasingly shrill campaign of ad hominem attacks against, among others, this author. The transparent purpose of such vitriol is to suppress informed, but dissenting, views and to try to marginalize those who hold them.

That would be pretty much the agenda of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and other Islamic supremacists. Ironically, the latter will, at the first opportunity, put to the knife key constituencies of the left: feminists and other women, homosexuals, Jews and other religious minorities, atheists, artists, songwriters, etc.

Anyone who doubts the peril that faces America need look no further than what is happening in Europe. Free speech that Islamic supremacists find offensive has been banned by the European Union. The Muslim Brotherhood’s stealthy “civilization jihad” and largely unrestricted migration from Islamic nations have given rise to a perfect storm, one that now seems likely, inexorably to present native Europeans with a choice of submission to shariah or civil war.

Before we face anything like such a choice here, knowledgeable national security experts and responsible politicians have a duty to raise an alarm and offer constructive alternatives. Those who would deny us the opportunity to do so by name-calling, character-assassination or otherwise suppressing our freedom of speech must not be allowed to prevail.

It’s Shariah, Stupid

Last night, President Obama used his third prime-time address from the Oval Office to try to allay widespread concerns in the aftermath of the San Bernardino attack that he neither understands the nature of the enemy that perpetrated that and similar acts of terror here and abroad nor has an effective strategy for defeating it.

Regrettably, those concerns were only reinforced both by what he said and by what hedidn’t say.

To his credit, the President made a leitmotif of his remarks a “destructive ideology” that must be confronted and defeated. Yet, he refused to name it, other than by association with the group he insists on calling “ISIL” – an acronym for what was once known as the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant, but that now simply calls itself the Islamic State (or IS).

If we are actually serious about defeating that ideology, we must be honest about its nature – and realistic about all its adherents.

In much of the Muslim world, the Islamic State’s ideology is known as “shariah.”  While IS has been particularly effective at branding itself as the world’s foremost enforcer of that brutally repressive, supremacist doctrine, the truth is that it animates every other jihadist group, as well – including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Boko Haram, the al Nusra Front, al Shabaab and the granddaddy of them all: the Muslim Brotherhood.

Our ability to acknowledge this reality, let alone act effectively upon that recognition, has been greatly hampered by another fact: Shariah is also regarded as the true practice of Islam by nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran, and by the religious authorities of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University.

This fact is particularly inconvenient since, according to Team Obama (among others): the Saudis are among our most important Mideast allies in the war on terror and a cornerstone of the President’s vaunted anti-ISIL coalition; the Iranians are our new-found strategic partners; and Islam is a “religion of peace” with which “we are not and never will be at war.”

To be clear, many millions of Muslims don’t practice their faith in accordance with shariah. Yet, many millions do. And the latter are obliged by shariah to engage in jihad or holy war.

Where practicable, shariah dictates they must do so through terrifying violence. Where not, they still must wage “holy war” through what the Muslim Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad.”

This is not so much a non-violent form of the effort to force the rest of the world – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – to submit to shariah and the dominion of a global ruler known as the Caliph. Rather, it would be more accurate to describe it as pre-violent jihad, since it is about setting the stage for the final, decisive use of terrifying force to accomplish the entire planet’s ultimate submission.

The use of stealthy, seditious techniques to subvert non-Muslim Western societies like ours means that we face more than what is increasingly called “radical Islamic terrorism” by those who fault President Obama for his failure to name the enemy. Influence operations aimed at penetrating and subverting of our civil society institutions and governmental policy-making are in many ways just as dangerous as the violent jihad they enable.

Evidence of that reality is not hard to find in the wake of the San Bernardino attacks. For example, the shariah-adherent Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas front group known as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) launched one of its classic political warfare campaigns in the immediate aftermath of those murderous shootings of unarmed Americans. It transparently sought to mislead the public about this act of jihad and to promote the meme that Muslims risked being victimized in its aftermath. It is no coincidence that President Obama has assiduously conveyed basically the same message from his bully pulpit.

If we are to survive the collective effort of shariah-adherent Muslims and their enablers around the world to force “non-believers” to submit to that toxic ideology, we have to recognize that a) that we are not just confronting the Islamic State, but all those who embrace and practice the same ideology; b) we must counter both the violent and the pre-violent jihadists; and c) this will require a comprehensive, clear-eyed and patient strategy akin to that utilized decisively by President Reagan to destroy the last totalitarian ideology that sought world domination: Soviet communism.

The Center for Security Policy has adapted the Reagan play-book in what we call theSecure Freedom Strategy. If we really want to prevail over today’s most dangerous and “destructive ideology,” this is the strategy we need.

“Bridge-Building” to Nowhere

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In this new monograph, adapted from Annex 1 of his superb recent book, Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy Stephen Coughlin explains what’s really behind the so-called ‘interfaith dialogue movement’ and how the Muslim Brotherhood has co-opted the well-meaning but misguided intentions of the Catholic Church in particular. Mr. Coughlin’s expertise in the nexus between Islamic Law (shariah) and Islamic terrorism informs his exposure of the manipulative Brotherhood strategy to use the interfaith dialogue arena as an opportunity to edge Catholics toward a dislocation of faith so as to pave the way for the insinuation of shariah into American faith communities and society in general.

At a time when Vatican policy seems to many to have become unmoored from the traditional doctrinal teachings of the Church in ways advanced by the permissive environment of the interfaith dialogue movement, including tolerance of anti-Constitutional, anti-Western, shariah-based Islamic principles as well as those who promote them, this publication hits home hard. As Mr. Coughlin points out, it is intellectually impossible to adhere faithfully to Church doctrine and yet grant acceptance to principles that are fundamentally opposed to such precepts at the same time. Only a dislocation of Catholic faith could allow such moral equivalence. Ultimately, as he argues, the objective of Islamic supremacists is the prioritization of interfaith relationships over advocacy on behalf of fellow Christians being slaughtered elsewhere by the co-religionists of their Muslim interfaith partners—in other words, the neutralization of the Catholic faith community as a serious obstacle to the encroachment of shariah.

In praise of this new Center publication, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney said,

While the interfaith dialogue movement presents itself as a laudable effort to ‘bridge’ the distance between faiths, those more familiar with the doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood know that the actual agenda of too many such efforts is, in fact, modeled after the well-known dictum of Sayyid Qutb, who candidly reminded Muslims that such a ‘bridge’ is ‘only so that the people of Jahiliyyah [society of unbelievers] may come over to Islam.

The Center for Security Policy/Secure Freedom is proud to present this monograph as a superb addition to its Civilization Jihad Reader Series. “Bridge-Building” to Nowhere: The Catholic Church’s Case Study in Interfaith Delusion is available for purchase in kindle and paperback format on Amazon.com.

If It Walks Like An Influence Operation…

The more we learn about the facts surrounding the events in Irving, Texas this week, the more it seems we’ve been bamboozled.

The now-universal rendering of the story is that a student named Ahmed Mohamed was wrongly removed from his school in handcuffs for innocently bringing in a homemade “clock.”

The purported injustice of this story – laced with the implication that it all happened because Ahmed is a Muslim – has made him an instant celebrity, winning fawning treatment from MIT to Stephen Colbert to the White House.

The facts, however, suggest this may have been a provocation. For starters, building and bringing to school what sure looked like a trigger for an improvised briefcase bomb would predictably raise an alarm.

It appears, the “clock” Mohamed brought to school this week was not the first of his circuit boards to look ominously like an improvised explosive device trigger.  In fact, a photograph of one circulated by the Dallas Morning News was virtually indistinguishable from a circuit board used in a commercially available device used to train law enforcement and military personnel regarding how to identify IEDs.

There is, moreover, now growing evidence that these creations were not even those of the geeky freshman. See Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock and Ourselves on Artvoice.com and Thomas Talbot’s YouTube video.

When Ahmed’s miniature briefcase “clock” did precipitate such concerns, he refused to answer questions from school personnel and police about “his intentions and why he had brought the device to school.” Presumably, they were particularly interested in knowing whether he had brought anything else to school – perhaps to include the other part of such a bomb: the explosive component.

Under the circumstances and in accordance with protocols adopted in Irving – and in school districts across America to protect students and faculty from the sorts of attacks that have resulted in mass murders in several instances, Ahmed was taken into custody. The photograph of him in handcuffs that has gone viral, however, was not taken as he was escorted from the high school. Rather, it was staged after his father insisted at the police station that the cuffs remain on so his sister could take the picture.

In very short order, the family was under management by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization established – ironically, in a federal prosecution conducted in nearby Richardson, Texas – to be a Muslim Brotherhood-associated fundraising and political warfare arm for the designated terrorist group, Hamas. Ahmed lawyered up and he and his family were no-shows for scheduled meetings with school officials and with the police chief and Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne.

In fact, at the very hour the latter meeting was supposed to occur, the Mohameds and their Islamic supremacist handlers were instead holding a press conference. In the course of the presser, the family made clear that their beef wasn’t with the Irving school district or the police. It was with the city’s political leadership, starting with Mayor Van Duyne.

That message has subsequently become a staple of the Islamists. For example, local news on September 18th featured a quote from one, Khalid Hamadeh of the Islamic Association of North Texas, decrying “political leaders espousing inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric and creating a climate of fear.”

Mayor Van Duyne has been a prime target of the Muslim grievance industry in Texas – a fixture of the Islamists’ large and aggressive operations in the state and elsewhere – ever since last spring when she opposed the establishment of an Islamic tribunal in her city. She did so out of a legitimate concern that such an entity would serve as its counterparts have elsewhere, notably in Britain – namely, as a vehicle for dispensing “justice” as defined, not by the laws of the land, but in accordance with the Islamic supremacist code called shariah.

Another data point: Attacks on Ms. Van Duyne in connection with the Ahmed Mohamed affair appear to have been pre-arranged and synchronized, rather than the sort of reaction that builds over time. Her Facebook and Twitter accounts, and those of the city government and school district, were suddenly and massively assaulted with vehement denunciations of the treatment of this student. Some were so vile, obscene and threatening that the Mayor has been compelled to accept police protection.

It is impossible to say for certain at this point whether the campaign to smear, silence and politically destroy Mayor Beth Van Duyne – a campaign pursued for months by the Islamists and greatly enabled by the Dallas Morning News and others – was actually a premeditated and skillfully executed provocation and influence operation. What is clear, however, is that in the aftermath of the predictable response to Ahmed’s actions, it has turned into an extraordinarily successful campaign of disinformation and political warfare against an American community and its courageous and honorable mayor, the Irving school district and local law enforcement.

Either way, this larger campaign must be recognized for what it certainly is, and repudiated, not applauded – not only by protective parents of school-age children, but by patriotic Americans across the country who are opposed to Islamic supremacism and the threat it poses to us all.

A clock or a bomb trigger, can you tell the difference?

The latest outrage being used to promote the false narrative about unfair treatment of Muslims is the teenager, Ahmed Mohamed, in Irving Texas arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school. If you just skimmed the surface and saw the picture of the skinny nerd in the NASA t-shirt in handcuffs it would be easy to see a problem.

And there is one, but it’s not discrimination against a Muslim kid that wouldn’t have happened to a non-Muslim. It’s nanny state, zero tolerance policies that take away the ability to apply common sense to complicated situations. In this case, whether or not to put cuffs on a 14 year old.

But as far as the other question, was the clock device he brought to school a legitimate cause for concern, the answer is an unequivocal yes. I have built and taught classes on improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and the clock he brought to school is a dead ringer for the trigger used on many of these homemade bombs.

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Here is a side by side comparison of Ahmed’s clock and an Iranian-made IED trigger used to kill US troops in Iraq. Even more importantly, here is a picture of an IED training device sold to US law enforcement agencies to help them identify and learn how to deal with homemade bombs. They would have been deficient in performing their public safety duties if they had not done a full examination and investigation of the device, it’s presence at school and the person who built it and brought it there.

The grievance mongers of CAIR and other Islamist front groups are using this incident to portray the Irving, TX police and government as anti-Islamic. They point to another incident where Mayor Beth Van Duyne refused to accept an Islamic tribunal in her town that was trying to supplant US law with Shariah law. That would have been un-American and Mayor Van Duyne was appropriately American in saying absolutely not. We felt strongly enough about that to award her our Defender of Freedom award earlier this year.

We don’t know why Ahmed built and brought his clock to school, but he and his father were certainly quick to trot out quotes about it happening because of his brown skin, or that it wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t a Muslim. There is zero evidence that Ahmed was singled out due to his religion, and two teachers who saw the device both told him to put it away because it resembled a bomb.

It is time to tell the outrage industry to quit abusing our public servants for doing the jobs we ask them to do.

Why Is a Sitting US Congressman Speaking at a Jihadist-Associated Convention

Over the national holiday weekend of Labor Day, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is assembling for its 52nd Annual Convention from 4-7 September 2015 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois. The Muslim Brotherhood convention’s theme is “Stories of Resilience: Strengthening the American Muslim Narrative.” Per the program and screenshot below from the ISNA website, United States Representative Keith Ellison (Democrat, 5th District, MN) is slated to speak at this key gathering of Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, front groups, and leadership on Saturday, 5 September 2015. His topic, “Exploring the Parallels of Islam and the America’s Labor Movement,” offers a glimpse of the U.S. Brotherhood strategy to co-opt oppression and victimization narratives of the civil rights movement and working class in America. Of note, Mr. Ellison has received at least $136,092 in financing from Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations since April 2006 and recently participated in June 2014 as a keynote speaker at the secretive inaugural banquet for the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the first political activist group in this country to be openly associated with the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood.

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Persecution Of Christians In Sudan Is the Norm and Increasing

On Wednesday August 5, two South Sudanese Christian pastors were released after they had been arrested for their Christian faith. Yat Michael, 49, was convicted in December 2014 for “inciting hatred” and Peter Yein Reith, 36, was convicted in January 2015 for “breaching public peace”.

Michael was convicted after “delivering a message of encouragement” to the Khartoum Bahri Evangelical Church in North Khartoum. The Baptist Press previously reported that on December 2, 2014, Sudanese police forces beat, arrested, fined, and later released around 38 Christians from this church.

Baptist Press also reported that on October 5, 2013, Sudanese police and security forces attacked the church, breaking through the fence to beat and arrest more Christians.

Furthermore, this church had been the subject of “government harassment, arrests, and demolitions” in the attempts of Muslim investors to take over the land. This is consistent with the belief of many in Khartoum that “the real battle with authorities is over the land”.

Reith was convicted after sending a letter looking into Michael’s location. The letter came from leaders of Michael and Peter’s denomination, the South Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church.

When South Sudan seceded in 2011, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir vowed he would push for stricter Islamic Shariah law implementation and proliferation of the Arabic language, knocking aside years of various tribal cultural traditions, languages, and ways of life.

Open Doors, an organization devoted to supporting persecuted Christians, reported that Sudan ranked sixth on its 2015 World Watch List of 50 countries where Christians face the most persecution. Considering that last year Sudan ranked 11th, it seems that Sudan is not too concerned with changing its behavior any time soon. In fact, it seems to be doing just the opposite. Open Door also reports that, “The incumbent regime is authoritarian and strives to control all aspects of life of its citizens. Blasphemy laws are used country-wide to persecute and prosecute Christians”.

Sudan should be pressured to changes its actions towards and treatment of these Christians. So far, however, the current administration has not been a fighting force for this cause.  President Obama met in Ethiopia with foreign officials to discuss the South Sudanese civil war, and failed to invite South Sudan to the table while representation from Sudan was present.  Such a tone-def approach portrays a confusing picture about the US’s priorities in Africa.  Protecting minority rights is clearly not a priority in U.S. policy toward Sudan.

It is time to take a stand against this religious persecution. The administrations’ acceptance of a consistent and clear African foreign policy would definitely be a step in the right direction.

It’s Not A Deal If You Don’t Shake Hands

A BBC article released today discusses the “unprecedented number of female diplomats”, who were key components in the nuclear deal agreement with Iran. The article praises these women, their hard work, and the central roles they played in the months of continued talks.

However, the article also mentions when at the end of the agreement, the male Iranian negotiators refused to shake hands with the female diplomats. Going against the standard of shaking hands upon the sealing of a deal, the Iranians avoided the women in accordance with their strict religious laws.

Wendy Sherman, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, responded to this behavior saying,

“…I think we all understood how to speak to each other without shaking hands and understanding each other to the extent that we got an agreement”.

While Sherman is evidently aware of the religious laws that forbid Muslim males from touching women who aren’t their wives or unmarriageable relatives, and does not seem to see anything wrong with such behavior, this instance only further highlights issues regarding the treatment of women in Islam and under Shariah law.

Sherman also mentioned that,

“When I sat across from the Iranians, I was the United States of America and perhaps as a woman I can say some things that don’t come across a tough, but when I do get tough and when I do lose it, it makes a big impression because it’s unexpected.”

Does this mean that female negotiators, politicians, and diplomats have to “get tough and lose it” to ever make any progress with Muslim male equivalents? Sherman is missing the point that, as a woman, she is not recognized as a legitimate counterpart to male Iranian religious leadership in any negotiation.  That gives us a clearer picture of what the Iranians think of the deal than the administration’s explanations thus far.

At the end of the day, it’s not a deal if you don’t shake hands.